Grabbed from the Athletic before the paywall kicked in. Worth a read.
Antonio Conte is back at the wheel, but for how much longer?
Conte will resume media duties on Tuesday lunchtime before Wednesday’s Champions League game with AC Milan. It has been almost five weeks since his gallbladder surgery, since when he has done most of his management remotely from Italy. A brief upturn in results gave way to two dispiriting defeats at Sheffield United and Wolves last week.
This spell of illness means Conte has been spared from being asked about his contract and his future, but as soon as he sits down in front of the cameras again, the questions will be unavoidable. Conte’s contract has less than four months to run. If Spurs fail to get past Milan on Wednesday night, he will only have 12 more games in charge. The Conte era, which promised so much, could be coming to an end.
This is not a normal situation for a top club. Clubs want stability and a clear direction of travel. But Tottenham signed Conte in November 2021 on a 20-month contract, hoping they could agree a longer deal this sesaon. Talks were held after the World Cup but went nowhere and are unlikely to be revived. The only focus is getting to the end of the season. There is an option in the contract for another year but Tottenham have no intention of keeping Conte against his will.
There is a broad sense among the players that he is off at the end of the season. Some will miss him, but many will not, having grown tired of his intensity, training sessions and approach to the game. Many of the squad just want clarity about the situation. (This does not just apply to current Spurs players but also to potential transfer targets, who are in the dark about what Tottenham will look like next season.)
Some of the longest-serving Spurs players might remember the Tim Sherwood interregnum — those five months between the sacking of Andre Villas-Boas and the appointment of Mauricio Pochettino. It felt like the whole club was drifting to the end of the season.
Inside the club now, they sense a need to take control of the situation and make clear that they are thinking about life beyond Conte. They do not want to sleepwalk into a manager-less post-season as they did two years ago. Succession planning will not begin on the bus back from Elland Road after the final game of the season.
We do not know what the post-Conte era will look like. There is so much uncertainty — about who will be making the big decisions at the club, about which European competition Spurs will play in next season, about the futures of key players. Almost everything at Tottenham Hotspur is up in the air, and nothing is nailed down. Spurs fans will be familiar with the feeling. Perhaps that is part of why so many Spurs fans would like the club to provide them with the comforting certainty of a familiar face.
Pochettino, who managed Spurs from 2014 to 2019, is at the top of the summer wishlist for many Spurs fans. To most of them, he is the greatest and most loved manager of their lifetimes, the man who built a thrilling young team and took Spurs to the brink of success. It is three and a half years since chairman Daniel Levy sacked Pochettino, and very little that has happened since suggests Levy’s strategic pivot was right.
Nine years after he first appointed him, Levy has many reasons to go back to Pochettino, chief among them that it would be one of the most unambiguously popular moves he has ever made at Spurs. Despite his remote image, Levy cares deeply about what the fans want and even what gets written on social media. If he wants to win back the crowd, this is the biggest single lever he can pull.
This is not just pure nostalgia either. The football that Spurs played under Pochettino and the coaching methodology underpinning it were more modern than anything we have seen there since. Spurs have gone back in time since they sacked him, appointing a series of big-name managers who play negative football. The team has never been as fit, brave proactive or dominant as they were back then.
Spurs have been playing reactive football for years and it is only because they have been in the peak years of Harry Kane and Son Heung-min that results have not been worse. The idea of getting back to high-energy, high-pressing football is hugely attractive. When Levy famously talked about Tottenham’s ‘DNA’ in 2021 he was really just talking about Pochettino’s philosophy.
The prospect of an emotional reunion appeals to Pochettino as well as to the club. It was less than two years ago that Tottenham tried to bring Pochettino back for the first time, just six months into his role at Paris Saint-Germain. He was not enjoying his time in Paris and was starting to realise that he had had more power at Tottenham than he knew at the time. The idea of returning to Tottenham as the hero tugged at Pochettino’s heartstrings. But ultimately it was not up to him: PSG could not stomach the idea of losing their head coach. They even extended Pochettino’s contract by another year.
That would not be a barrier this time. Pochettino still spends a lot of time at his home in north London, and many Spurs fans would like Levy to drive around there next week, contract offer in hand. But what if the reality is not so simple? For a start, Tottenham may have some competition. Remember: Real Madrid president Florentino Perez has tried twice in the past to appoint Pochettino — first in 2018 and again three years later, both after Zinedine Zidane had quit.
The first time, Real ended up with Julen Lopetegui after Spurs rebuffed them. When PSG did the same in 2021, Carlo Ancelotti rejoined and has remained since. It is still unclear whether Ancelotti will be at Real Madrid next season, but if he does leave then Pochettino would surely be under consideration from Perez for a third time. And this time, unlike in 2018 and 2021, Pochettino would not be under a contract managing anyone else.
Even though there were difficult moments when Pochettino managed PSG that does not mean that he is no longer interested in working at one of Europe’s biggest clubs. PSG has its own set of circumstances, in terms of ownership and the uniquely top-heavy squad. Real Madrid is not quite as abnormal as PSG. If offered the chance to take over at the Bernabeu, it would obviously be hugely attractive.
The other factor here is Fabio Paratici. His arrival as Spurs’ managing director of football in June 2021 means that Tottenham is organised differently from how it was when Pochettino was there. Levy only turned to Paratici when it became clear that PSG would block Pochettino’s return to Spurs. The thinking at Spurs that summer was that they would either go for Pochettino or Paratici, who would then choose a new head coach. The idea of having Pochettino and Paratici working together simultaneously was never on the cards.
Ultimately this is about power. Paratici was brought in to Spurs to run the football side of the club, to be the visible face at the training ground every day, to speak to players, to liaise between the coaching staff and the club, and of course to run the recruitment. His role as a go-between between Conte and Levy has been especially important in recent months. It is a job that he fills and the players have certainly been impressed by his presence.
If Pochettino were to return, hypothetically, then of course he would want to be the charismatic king of the training ground, just like he was from 2014 to 2019. Pochettino worked with a close team around him who were unfailingly loyal to him. This is not to say that Pochettino cannot work with a director of football, but rather that things work better if they are pulling in the same direction. So it does not feel — at least in theory — as if there would be room for Pochettino and Paratici to work together at the club. It feels likelier that there is only room for one of them.
So if Paratici is given the decisive say in who replaces Conte then it is difficult to see why he would go for the one man who would challenge his power at the club. To do so would be to undermine the power base he has spent almost two years building up. He would rather have a coach he knows and trusts and who would owe him his position at the club. Who would Paratici pick if he could choose Conte’s replacement? There are no guarantees of anything but he has always been a big admirer of Luis Enrique, who won the treble with Barcelona in 2015 and left the Spain national team job after last year’s World Cup.
But even though in theory Paratici makes the football decisions at Spurs, it is far from clear whether Paratici will choose Conte’s replacement. For a start, Paratici’s position is under scrutiny after he was given a 30-month ban in Italy for accounting practices at Juventus. There is no suggestion he has broken any rules at Spurs, where he remains a highly valued member of staff. His record in the transfer market at Spurs has been largely exceptional. But it remains to be seen how the Juventus case will affect his long-term future.
Even if Paratici does ride out the storm, it does not mean he has control over the biggest decisions. Paratici had little say in Tottenham recruiting Conte, even though they worked together at Juventus. That deal was driven by Levy. Paratici found out late in the process, on the night after Spurs lost 3-0 to Manchester United. And if Levy did not mind seizing control of the wheel to appoint Conte, why would he worry about doing the same again this summer?
The other name you hear most often in connection with Tottenham is Thomas Tuchel. He has been out of work since being sacked by Chelsea six months ago. He has a stellar CV — not just Champions League and Club World Cup trophies with Chelsea but also two Ligue 1 titles with PSG (as well as their best Champions League campaign, reaching the 2020 final). He has experience coaching big-name players, a commitment to modern methods and a more proactive playing style than Spurs’ last three managers. He also knows the Premier League and speaks perfect English. It would feel like a smooth transition.
Tottenham is an attractive job in many ways but Tuchel may feel like he has better options. He will have seen that even Conte could not get Spurs higher than fourth in the table and has not taken them near any silverware. If Tuchel concludes that fourth is Spurs’ ceiling he may decide that he would rather his next job was at a club more set up to win.
Tuchel will know better than anyone that if Bayern Munich want to replace Julian Nagelsmann, he would be at the front of the queue to take over there. Equally Tuchel, like Pochettino, would be under consideration at Real Madrid if Ancelotti goes at the end of the season. He could end up with his choice of top jobs.
There is another factor with the potential appointment of Tuchel. He would be the fifth former Chelsea manager to take over at Spurs under Levy, and fourth in the last 11 years. (Glenn Hoddle in 2001, Andre Villas-Boas in 2012, Jose Mourinho in 2019 and Conte in 2021 being the others.) Hoddle can probably belong in a separate category — he was a Spurs legend as a player — but the other three were synonymous with Chelsea, starting their careers in England there. Many Spurs fans do not want the club to keep appointing managers after they have been dispatched from Stamford Bridge. Tuchel could well be tarred with the same brush.
Imagine a future in which Pochettino goes to Real Madrid and Tuchel to Bayern (or to different jobs, or they simply say no to Spurs). What would Tottenham do then? Some fans would love to see Ryan Mason promoted to the top job. He has been a valued part of Conte’s coaching staff and his influence has only increased during Conte’s recent absence. Mason and Cristian Stellini take the big decisions together on training and tactics. The players have been hugely impressed with Mason.
Mason, however, will only turn 32 in June, and even though he took interim charge at the end of the 2020-21 season when Mourinho was sacked, Levy may think he is not experienced enough. (At the same time, Mikel Arteta nearly got the Arsenal job at 36, got it at 37, and look at how that is turning out. Villas-Boas got the Porto job at 32, Chelsea at 33 and Tottenham at 34. There are precedents here.)
Who else is there? Roberto De Zerbi has taken Brighton & Hove Albion to another level since replacing Graham Potter and though he has three years left on his contract he is already being linked with a move away. Marco Silva is on track to deliver Fulham’s best Premier League season and his contract extension remains unsigned. Thomas Frank has done excellent work at Brentford, which has not gone unnoticed at Spurs. Perhaps the most intriguing name is Steve Cooper, who took Nottingham Forest into the Premier League before beginning to guide them away from the relegation places. It would be a big step up to Spurs but he has plenty of admirers.
It would certainly represent a pivot from Levy to go for a younger, less-decorated manager. He has spent the last few years trying to run Spurs like Chelsea on a budget, appointing a succession of high-profile short-term managers in the hope that they could instil a winning mentality to get them over the line. But it has not worked and all Spurs have to show for it was 2021’s League Cup final defeat and last season’s fourth-place finish.
Maybe this will be the summer when Spurs go back to their old approach, of patiently rebuilding over the longer term, regardless of who the next head coach may be.
